An Ethernet® network disclosed in patent document 1 describes a technique that implements a shortest path for transferring a frame between nodes. The shortest path is a path to an addressed node or a destination node, that has the minimum number of repeaters among other paths. The number of the repeaters on the path may be designated as a repeater count.                (Patent document 1) Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-509825        
The repeater implementing the technique disclosed in the patent document 1 transmits all the frames having the same destination address on the same shortest path, when the frames addressed to the same destination address are received by a plurality of ports at the same time. As such, a traffic congestion of a specific communication path is likely to be caused, and the traffic congestion hinders efficient communication and transfer of the frames to the destination node.